Workers' Compensation

Workers’ Compensation and Carpal Tunnel Syndrome

Ella Baker
Workers’ Compensation and Carpal Tunnel Syndrome
Reading time 4 Mins
Published on Aug 28
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If your company requires workers to perform repetitive hand or wrist motions, you should be particularly aware of the risks of carpal tunnel syndrome, how it effects your employees, and how it relates to your workers’ compensation coverage. Ensuring the health and safety of your employees can help you reduce your exposure to workers’ compensation claims and lost productivity.

What is carpal tunnel?

Carpal tunnel syndrome (CTS) is a repetitive stress injury that develops when the nerves or tendons of the wrist become compressed. Typically occurring due to repeated pressure or compression of the median nerve, over time CTS can impair the movement and feeling in most parts of the wrist, hands, and fingers. The inflammation or swelling of tendons within the carpal tunnel can put pressure the median nerve, causing pain the hands and arms.

CTS can occur in one or both hands and is a progressive injury, meaning it tends to worsen over time. Among other symptoms, individuals with CTS might experience:

  • tingling in the hands, fingers, wrists, and arms
  • numbness in hands
  • weakness in arms, wrists, hands, or fingers
  • pain and/or swelling in the wrists and hands.

There are numerous treatment options for CTS, depending on the severity of the injury and individual responses to treatment. Health care providers often try mobilizing the affected area with a splint or brace as an initial measure. Often physical therapy is incorporated as part of treatment, including stretches and strengthening exercises for the muscles and tendons. Steroids and anti-inflammatory medications are sometimes administered to reduce swelling and associated pain. In more extreme cases, surgery may be considered to relieve pressure from the affected nerves and tendons.

Reducing risk of carpal tunnel development

Carpal tunnel can often take months or years to develop or manifest. That doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t encourage your employees to take precautions and offer modifications to reduce your employees’ risk of developing carpal tunnel.

Encourage employees to take a 10- to 15- minute break every hour to relax and stretch their hands. This time away from performing repetitive motions can help reduce the risk of injury for your employees.

If possible, you might also offer employees the opportunity to rotate work stations periodically to reduce their risk of developing CTS. You can also install or acquire equipment that allows employees to exert less effort in completing manual tasks with their hands, such as ergonomically designed wrenches.

Another simple step is to make sure that the temperature in workspaces isn’t too cool. Colder work environments can aggravate pain and stiffness. Offer fingerless gloves to employees in colder months, which keep hands and wrists warm and loose without sacrificing dexterity in the fingers.

Workers’ compensation and carpal tunnel

Workers’ compensation provides benefits to employees who become injured or ill due to a workplace incident or exposure. Unlike typical workplace injuries, CTS requires proof that the employee’s injury was a direct result of the requirements of their employment.

Some work-related activities that can lead to the development of CTS include:

  • frequent typing
  • use of hand-held power tools that cause vibrations
  • drilling
  • using a cash register
  • mechanical work
  • repetitive pushing, slicing, twisting or pressing of objects.

An employee’s age, gender, prior trauma, and pre-existing medical conditions all impact their likelihood of developing CTS. While CTS can affect workers in almost any injury, the most common occupations in which workers develop CTS include:

  • administrative and data entry workers
  • chefs
  • truck drivers

If an employee’s claim is accepted, their case moves forward just as any other claim.

Protect your company

Protecting the financial safety of your company and the health of your employees is a top priority for you. A better understanding of the risk factors that contribute to carpal tunnel syndrome and ways to help your employees avoid developing it can help save your company money while protecting the safety of your employees.

Contact a Sheakley Workers’ Compensation expert today to learn more about how workers’ compensation applies to your business. Working with more than 16,000 employers across Ohio, Sheakley’s Workers’ Compensation team has the experience to help you make the best decisions for your organization.

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